Routers Really Haven't Changed Much in 25 Years

The humble router is your gateway to the internet. Everything you do on your home broadband connection goes through it, and if it's playing up it breaks your internet. In fact, if yours is anything like mine, it cocks up much more than it should. Maybe that's because they've barely changed in the last 25 years.

Founded in 1988, and launching its first wireless router in 2001, Linksys arguably used to make some of the best routers around. Mind you, that's not saying much, they still crunched under load in my experience.

Anyway, apart from adding Wi-Fi, and then its various extensions, plus upgraded modems and a few protocols for your connection to the outside world, the humble router has stayed pretty much the same. Maybe it's time someone made a router that can genuinely handle the 100Mbps+ our broadband is pushing these days for longer than a few minutes. [PCMag]